For a digital business, building trust in a world of data breaches and privacy worries is tough. Fintech businesses have an added layer of responsibility to their customers: they’re dealing with sensitive personal information and finances.
Trust isn’t solely about security architecture and data privacy. If it were, there’d be no variance between the world’s biggest banking apps; consumers would trust them all equally. So what makes the difference? How does one fintech app win trust and users over another, even when both have fantastic data privacy and security records?
In this article, we explore how transparency, Open Banking and UX design influence fintech customers. You’ll learn how UX design can build trust through macro and micro changes, and how that same trust drives customer adoption and design-driven return.
The role of Open Banking in fintech’s future
Firstly, let’s talk about a UK ruling called Open Banking. This is the UK version of the PSD2 directive, designed to ensure open transparency in the banking industry. It has cracked open the UK’s banking industry to allow third parties to access key financial information with users’ permission.
For a user, Open Banking is a good move. It makes the banking industry more transparent and accountable, and market competition pushes banks to offer better user experiences.
Open Banking allows businesses to access customer information, provided they have permission, through a bank’s API. For consumers, this means easy access to apps that can help plan finances, track spending and more, but only if they grant permission.
Open Banking has specific applications. A provider can only use it for accessing account information or payment initiation, and both require separate permissions from the user. To access Open Banking, you’ll need to be on the FCA register and the Open Banking register.
Open Banking means fintech businesses can offer:
- Deeper forecasting and user personalisation: a deeper level of personalisation for users, plus more integrations with machine learning and big data to build predictive models that benefit users’ finance management and forecasting.
- Increased access to financial services: the speed of authentication offered by Open Banking means more customers get access to things like loan applications, which could even go to multiple lenders from one source.
- Easy payments: initiating payments through a bank’s API means users benefit from instant payments, making sending a payment as simple as a message.
Like any new concept, Open Banking needs to build trust. The real challenge for fintech businesses is still to build trust from the ground up. Open Banking is a great concept, but if nobody trusts your app or brand, they won’t willingly grant the permissions it requires.
The trust pyramid and fintech
Trust is a vague idea that isn’t measurable by any defined metric. It combines other judgements such as credibility, authority, reliability, helpfulness and friendliness.
The Nielsen Norman Group’s trust pyramid defines five levels of commitment, each with its own user needs. Users only move up a level when they feel their current needs are being met:
- Baseline relevance and trust that needs can be met. Does this site help me achieve my goal? Does it seem credible and factual? Does it have my interests at heart?
- Interest and preference over other options. Why should I choose this platform over any other? What does it offer they don’t?
- Trust with personal information. Does the site offer enough value to justify the effort of inputting my information? Would I trust the brand behind it?
- Trust with sensitive and financial information. Do I trust the app with my financial information? How risky is it?
- Willingness to commit to an ongoing relationship. Should I allow a continuous connection, such as linking an account or authorising payments?
Fintech businesses don’t have the luxury of slowly working up this pyramid. They must win enough trust from the first user interaction to reach the top layers, where users share financial information or consent to ongoing payment relationships.
To build that trust as quickly as possible, fintech must turn to UX design.
Building trust through UX design
“UX/UI design plays an important role in establishing user trust. Research has shown that the usability and design of a digital product have a direct impact on a user’s trust in it. The UI should be clean and intuitive and avoid looking dated. But there’s a delicate balance between making the app fun and engaging and making it overly informal so that it doesn’t seem legitimate. The app should provide clear instructions for tasks and double opt-ins to prevent user mistakes and allow them to feel more confident.” (Catrin Orr, UX/UI Designer at Komodo)
Trust is often based on a gut reaction to visual stimuli, made quicker than our conscious minds even realise: Google has stated that users form opinions in as little as 17 milliseconds. Fintech apps must broadcast trustworthiness instantly. Provided your security and privacy systems are watertight, it’s your UX and UI designers who are ultimately responsible for establishing trust.
Three fundamental questions to ask about your product:
Does it look professional?
In fintech, you need a professional brand that comes across as competent. Eliminate typos, which are always a killer for trust; if spelling is incorrect anywhere in the app, trust goes out the window. Invest in a good copywriter or editor. Consider trusted designs such as badges that show security over payments. They’re a dated concept, but still relevant and useful.
Does it offer what the customer needs?
You need to conduct detailed user research before designing anything. User research helps you know who your users are, what they want and how your product will offer it. Further down the line, customising the platform around user behaviour and Open Banking information will help provide a tailored, competitive experience. All of these things rely on good onboarding: always try to guide the user through steps, really holding their hand to help build trust.
Does it feel safe?
Trust can be built through consistency. Build a consistent, human brand experience across platforms to show users who you are. If they download your application, they will most likely search for the company; if the experience is consistent and looks legitimate, the customer will trust the app more.
It’s vital to make clear to users what you’re going to do with their data, not only during onboarding but in all features of the app going forward. Tell them why you’re asking for certain permissions or information, and show how giving it might benefit them.
UX design tips for fintech apps
Once you’ve answered the questions above and you’re meeting compliance, regulatory and legal standards, the differentiating factor between you and your competitors is the look and feel of your product. The design team are the people most responsible for establishing a sense of credibility and competency.
The Interaction Design Foundation features a conceptual formula devised by Ken Thompson, head of Bioteams Design, that aims to quantify trust: trustworthiness equals ability plus benevolence plus integrity.
- Ability is demonstrated through your design. The product shows its competency through well-planned UX design.
- Benevolence is about assisting users with their goals in mind. Your product must be designed to actively assist with user needs.
- Integrity is demonstrating ethical awareness, fairness and honesty in your design and wider brand. We’d argue this also includes accessibility: designers who make people with impairments or disabilities feel included win more trust than those who don’t.
It isn’t an exact science, but it’s a good demonstration of the fundamental concepts behind trust. With those three ideas in mind, here are our top suggestions for fintech UX designers.
Make things efficient
A fintech product must always be designed to minimise frustration and make things intuitive for all levels of users. Note that we didn’t say make things simple: in fintech, making things overly simplistic can actually detract from trust.
Be wary of ultra-fast processing times
Processes such as credit checks are often perceived as untrustworthy if the app handles them too quickly. Companies like Credit Karma have deliberately designed a slower loading process to instil a sense of trust when customers perform tasks they feel should be given adequate attention.
Words matter, use them wisely
Clean, legible fonts are a must, but the copy in your app should be faultless and designed to guide and assist your users. When asking for information or input, explain the value exchange a user receives in return.
Be playful, but not too playful
Animations, gifs and emojis all have their place in a personalised experience, but users want a sense of professionalism from their fintech apps. That doesn’t mean you can’t be playful; you just have to balance it against quality and a certain level of adult expectation. Monzo has nailed the playful tone and the words-matter points expertly.
Balance frustration against comfort
Most UX advice says the less a user has to input, the better. In fintech, that balance is thrown out by a user’s need to perceive security. Asking for additional information may reassure the user, whereas too little may create mistrust. Remember to explain why you need certain inputs.
Passive versus active signalling
Biometric processes can be passive (no specific action needed, like most face recognition) or active (a required input, like a fingerprint or signature). Use passive biometrics early to make things simple, but place active recognition in front of the most critical parts of your app, such as submitting a loan request or initiating a large transaction. Users accept the friction there because the stakes justify it.
Automate security measures
Sometimes you must design for when a user is not using the product. Where delicate financial information is displayed in the UI, designers should create automatic sign-out functions or ways to quickly obscure information when the user isn’t actively engaged.
Personalise where possible
Personalising an app experience helps users feel catered for, which increases trust. But like many things in fintech, it’s a balance: don’t ask for more personal information than you need. Consider letting the user choose goals or features based on their needs, giving them a feeling of control. A budgeting app might ask what their monthly saving goals are and which purchases to log or hide.
Be consistent and accessible
“Consistency across the user interface design in regards to componentry, branding, content and marketing can help to build a more intuitive flow and meet the user’s needs, helping to build familiarity and trust. Accessibility across the board can also help build a lot of trust: allowing a user to understand they are being catered for, whether that’s through tweaks to colour accessibility, legible text, alt tagging, or delving into the development side where necessary.” (Thomas Wood, Head of Product Design at Komodo)
Avoid dark UX
Avoid dark UX patterns, such as trial sign-up flows that guide a user into subscribing through highlighted calls to action and switched states, so the user goes down the sign-up path even though they may not want to.
Design around Open Banking
Open Banking is something to be embraced by UX designers. The API technology behind it means you may not require as much user input as you would have otherwise. However, you still need users to trust you enough to grant Open Banking permissions, so all the measures above remain just as relevant.
Overview
Trust is not a defined or measurable metric. Despite this, Open Banking and overall industry transparency show a clear desire for change: a more user-focused financial sector that makes experiences as easy as possible for end users. Fintech businesses have an excellent opportunity to launch user-focused products that can access incredible data. The real test is whether they can build the trust needed to get a user on board.
